


A Dark Shroud in the Commonwealth

by Reecey



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Fallout 4
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 04:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11395719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reecey/pseuds/Reecey
Summary: Lex Luthor was up to something, and it was Lois Lane's job to find out what that was. Only she'd been missing for several days and even Superman had no idea where she was.Faced with this, he asks the world's greatest detective to track her down.





	A Dark Shroud in the Commonwealth

**Author's Note:**

> This is my usual loose interpretation of the DC universe, so don't expect a strong adherence to any particular canon.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

He was _meant_ to be doing Superman a favour, go to where Lois Lane was last seen and help Kal figure out where’d she’d gone.

He was _not_ meant to be grabbing blueprints and diving into an artificially generated wormhole to follow her into whatever alternate dimension she’d got herself trapped in when she’d decided that infiltrating one of Luthor’s side projects by herself was the world’s greatest idea.

He ended up underground and surrounded by Noir era toughs with automatic weapons, an attack dog and some kind of horrible skin condition.

Once he’d taken them all out and restrained them, he went up to the next level, seeking a way out.

“We’ve got about three minutes to get out of here,” a deep masculine voice declared, “use that terminal to get this door open.”

Hacking in was child’s play. The interface was hopelessly outdated.

Once the door was open, a cigarette was lit and the man on the other side started talking.

“You’ve gotta love the-” he caught sight of Batman, “what the hell are you wearing?”

He was some kind of android, as far as Batman could tell, fairly old and ill-maintained if the holes in his skin and his skeletal right hand were anything to go by.

Abandoned at some point, most likely.

The shock on his face and in his voice made him seem human enough, and considering that he hadn’t attacked, he was a lucky find.

“I’m a masked vigilante, they’re common in my dimension.”

“... Right. You got a name? Or am I supposed to call you ‘Bat-guy’ or something?”

“Bat _man_.”

“Okay… I’m Valentine, Nick Valentine.”

He didn’t hold out his hand.

“We should leave before those men wake up,” Batman said, motioning through the door behind him.

“Wake- you didn’t kill them?”

“No.”

Valentine laughed.

“Regular boy scout, ain’t ya? This might be a good thing, Skinny will probably be happier letting you leave knowing his men are still alive.”

“Will there be more on the way out?”

Valentine nodded.

“I’ll take care of them, you stay behind me.”

“Just because they got the jump on me doesn’t mean I’m useless,” he protested.

Batman headed to the door out of the room, opening it and scanning the corridor.

“I’m an expert in non-lethal combat, and my suit is armoured. _You_ are a civilian in a trench coat.”

“What I am is a _cop_ in a trench coat.”

That was unexpected.

Batman nodded.

“Let’s do this without fatalities.”

“I’ll try my damned best.”

He didn’t like working with people with guns, but Valentine seemed satisfied to act as more of a distraction than anything.

Batman held up his hand as they approached an open room, and they both stopped.

“There’s a group of them up ahead.”

“It’s probably Skinny and a group of his men, along with his new flame, Darla.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I can probably talk them into letting us leave.”

Batman nodded.

“I have one question before we go in there.”

“Yeah?” Valentine asked with a quirked, painted on brow.

“Are you vulnerable to sleeping gas?”

“Shouldn’t be. That your backup if this goes pear shaped?”

 A grave nod.

Valentine barked out a laugh.

“You know, Batman, this whole thing,” he gestured at him, “is weird, but I’m not gonna say you ain’t fun to work with.”

They walked in.

“Nicky-” Skinny began, grinding to a halt when he spotted Batman, “what the hell is that guy wearing?”

“This here is Batman.”

“Why?” Darla demanded, the baseball bat she was holding lowering to the floor as she stared in utter confusion.

“Damned if I know. The important thing here, though, is that he got me out of that room without killing any of your men. So how about you let us go, and I tell Darla’s parents that she’s fine?”

Skinny, ironically named, even though it still oddly suited him, looked Batman up and down nervously.

“Yeah, sure, just… get the freak out of here.”

Valentine waved at Batman to follow him and every single gun in the room was trained on him as they headed to the ladder and climbed out.

Out in the cold and fresh air, Valentine lit another cigarette.

Batman looked around, they were surrounded by the ruins of an American city.

“Where are we?”

“This is, or used to be, Boston.”

“What happened?”

“Nuclear war.” Valentine put his lighter back in his pocket. “You said you were from another dimension, what are you doing in this one?”

“I’m looking for a woman.”

Valentine’s eyebrows raised.

“She wouldn’t happen to be this tall, black hair, blue eyes, and have a chip on her shoulder the size of Pennsylvania, would she?”

“Lois Lane, yes.”

Valentine laughed again.

“She’s in Diamond City. I ain’t taking you in looking like that though, we’ll have to get you some new clothes.”

“Understandable.”

“And a _name_ , I go in there calling you ‘Batman’ and they’re all going to think I’ve gone mad, or worse.”

“Fine, Malone.”

“That’s _his_ surname,” Valentine responded, gesturing down at the ground. “Look, we can come up with something, but let’s start heading to Goodneighbour. We’ve got ground to cover and there are probably raiders and super mutants to avoid between here and there. Your ‘no kill’ policy is admirable, but it’s gonna be a problem around here.”

Batman learned a lot about the post-nuclear Commonwealth of Massachusetts, such as what a super mutant was, when the war had taken place, that what he thought was a skin condition was actually a side effect of the radiation and confirmation that Valentine had been abandoned by the organisation that made him.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Valentine. You’re a good man, you deserve better.”

Valentine chuckled wryly.

“So what’s your story? How did you end up dressed like a bat and chasing reporters across dimensions?”

“I fight crime, the costume is to scare and intimidate criminals.”

“It didn’t exactly do much to Malone.”

“It’s designed for use in dark streets and alleyways, not for brightly lit rooms in underground bunkers.”

“And chasing after Lois?”

First name terms? How long had she been here?

“She went missing a few days ago following a lead on some side project of a known supervillain. A mutual acquaintance asked me to find her.”

“A few days? She’s been here a lot longer than that.”

“I’m not surprised, time can flow quite differently in different universes.”

They came up to a ramshackle looking wall with a door in it.

Valentine tried to come up with some good advice, but settled for, “be wary.”

It must be hard to advise a man dressed like a giant bat on how not to get into trouble.

The night had drawn in during their journey, the settlement’s light creating a light haze in the air above the wall.

The pair entered, and a man stalked up to them.

“Hey, you, freak. You come waltzing into Goodneighbour, and you gotta pay insurance.”

Batman almost sighed in relief. After all the androids, and ghouls and super mutants, here was something that he knew how to deal with.

He folded his arms across his chest.

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, if you don’t, bad things are gonna happen.”

His hand hovered near a gun holster at his belt.

Valentine watched the situation warily.

“Don’t do this, Finn,” he said in a low voice.

“You stay out of this, this is between me and the new boy.” He barked at the detective before turning back to Batman. “So what’s it gonna be?”

“I don’t have a single cap on me.”

Finn’s face curled in anger, “don’t bullshit me!”

His hand went to his gun and Batman moved.

One hand to knock Finn’s away from the gun, another to toss the gun away, then to grab his arm and use the momentum and a well placed foot to trip him to the floor.

Arm up with his hand between his shoulder blades and knee in the small of his back.

Batman leaned down and growled in his ear.

“Not a single cap.”

Finn swallowed air in his sudden panic.

Footsteps were approaching.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Batman let his arm go and stood up.

Finn scrambled away, getting to his feet and staggering towards the only way further into Goodneighbour.

Right into the path of an archaically dressed ghoul, and a heavily armed woman.

The ghoul clearly didn’t think he was telegraphing.

His relaxed demeanour and jovial tone as he dressed Finn down for threatening Valentine’s new friend wouldn’t have set alarm bells for the average person.

But Gotham had done _nothing_ if not trained Batman in the patterns of men like this one.

He’d barely gotten the knife out when the batarang flew and Batman was on top of them, knocking Finn away and tackling the ghoul into a wall.

“Don’t shoot!” he heard Valentine shout as he pinned the ghoul in a sitting position against a wall, one hand around his throat and the other trapping his right against the brickwork.

He stared at Batman with wide, completely black, eyes.

The woman was pressing the barrel of a gun into the side of his head.

“Let him go,” she commanded.

Almost lazily, the ghoul’s mouth stretched into a smile.

And he started laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> How will the caped crusader get out of this one?
> 
> Will Detective Valentine be able to defuse the situation, or will Goodneighbour be the final resting place of our stalwart hero?
> 
> Find out in the next thrilling chapter of 'A Dark Shroud in the Commonwealth'.
> 
> Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel!


End file.
